One star. Rated R, for pervasive profanity and strong language, violence, sexual candor and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang
Ick.
This thoroughly unpleasant waste of time isn’t really a movie; it’s a disgusting experience on par with military latrine duty.
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| Doing his best to please a first-time customer with plenty of cash, Diamond District shop owner Howard (Adam Sandler) hauls out a truly hideous example of bling. |
Fifteen minutes in, you’ll feel the need for a shower. Once the atrociously self-indulgent, 135-minute slog concludes, you’ll want to scrub off at least two layers of skin.
Class, can we spell l-o-a-t-h-s-o-m-e?
Hollywood tends to be oddly tolerant, when stand-up comics-turned-actors stray into dramatic territory. In fairness, the results sometimes justify such a charitable attitude; we need look no further than Melissa McCarthy, who delivered such sensitively layered work in last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Alas, Adam Sandler scarcely deserves such a free pass, for this repugnant travesty.
It feels as though every single minute of Uncut Gems is spent watching thoroughly unpleasant characters scream at each other, every other word of such outbursts punctuated by F-bombs and racial epithets. Co-writer/directors Benny and Josh Safdie — New York-based indie filmmakers — give us nobody to like or admire, even in a vicariously mean-spirited sense; nobody among this assortment of mopes, creeps, thugs and degenerates is worthy of God’s precious gift of life.
This film’s media champions — and there are many — apparently are impressed by its “authentic street” attitude, while conveniently overlooking the fact that, Sandler aside, nobody else is remotely credible with what seems to be entirely improvised dialog. The so-called acting is stiff, forced and shrill, defined by little beyond swagger.
Ironically, the best performances come from Keith Williams Richards and Tommy Kominik, as Phil and Nico, a couple of heavies who radiate lethal menace while saying very little. (We’ll get back to them.)
But okay, credit where due: Cinematographer Darius Khondji and editors Ronald Bronstein and Benny Safdie definitely catch the rhythm and flow, hustle and bustle, hurly and burly of New York City’s colorful Diamond District. A-plus for atmosphere.
As for the rest…
Sandler stars as the aptly named Howard Ratner, a longtime fixture in New York City’s turbulent Diamond District, where hustlers and con artists rub elbows with legitimate gem cutters and merchants. Once apprised of Howard’s personality, however, we cannot imagine how he has endured this long in a profession that depends so thoroughly upon trust (which, let it be clarified, isn’t the same as honesty).
Howard runs his own little shop in one of the region’s cheesier walk-ups, fortified behind airlock-style, bullet-proof glass doors, where one must be buzzed in and out. He’s forever hours away from financial catastrophe, thanks to a congenital lack of ethics that would give a snake pause. If somebody drops off a bauble for appraisal or repair, Howard will hock it at the nearest pawn shop, in order to buy back someother item belonging to some other customer, before that fellow can figure out what happened.
Or, alternatively, to obtain a few days’ grace on outstanding gambling debts to all manner of unsavory characters: none meaner — or less patient — than Arno (Eric Bogosian), forever accompanied by the aforementioned Phil and Nico.
Mind you, Arno is Howard’s brother-in-law.
Howard is like the vaudeville guy who spins plates atop rickety poles, adding ever more plates and frantically dashing between them; we know — the laws of gravity and retribution being what they are — that eventually the entire display will come a-tumblin’ down.
Howard lies to everybody: customers, clients, colleagues, his wife, his children. He’s the newest punch line to the old joke; we know he’s lying if his lips move. He’s also nasty, short-tempered, mean-spirited, arrogant, spiteful and emotionally abusive.
The notion that anybody would trust him with anything, after however many years he’s been operating, is beyond absurd. And, since we’re supposed to buy this crucial detail, this film falls apart almost immediately.
Humiliated wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) would have stayed married to this clown, long enough to produce three teenage children? Ridiculous … particularly since Julia (Julia Fox) — ostensibly one of Howard’s employees — is the latest in (we can safely assume) a long string of kept cuties.
Howard and Dinah don’t converse; they shout at each other. Which is par for the course, since Howard and Julia also spend most of their time shouting at each other.
The role’s allure for Sandler undoubtedly derived from Howard’s manic, motor-mouthed, rat-a-tat patter; he’s an ambulatory amphetamine cocktail, forever frantic, frenzied and ferocious. In polite society, he’d be exhausting, sucking all the air from a room. In this story’s environment, he’s merely one of many screeching to be heard amid the cacophony of ear-splitting nightclubs and spontaneous, street-level tête-à-têtes.
The story opens with Howard literally inches from disaster, both financial and (possibly) lethal. Salvation blossoms with the long-awaited arrival of a baseball-sized, uncut Ethiopian opal — we watch it discovered by slave miners, during a prologue — that contains (ahem) worlds within worlds, for those who peer into any of its sparkling facets.
Cue — several times, as this saga proceeds — interminable, hippy-trippy descents into the gem’s bowels, via kaleidoscopic montages right out of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s “stargate sequence,” or 2011’s mind-numbing Tree of Life. (At which point, the first time, smart patrons will exit the theater. ’Cause it only gets worse.)
This gem is Howard’s long-anticipated ticket to success, given that he fully expects to net $1 million when it’s put up for auction. But he makes the mistake of showing it off to NBA superstar Kevin Garnett (playing himself), who happens to be browsing in Howard’s shop at this crucial moment. Garnett can’t take his eyes off it, and must have it; in a heartbeat, the gem has wielded the talismanic power that possessed Humphrey Bogart’s Fred C. Dobbs, in 1948’s Treasure of Sierra Madre.
So Howard, currying favor, lets Garnett borrow it for the night.
Uh … seriously?
When Garnett plays superbly during that evening’s game, he becomes even more determined to retain the opal, now convinced that it’s his good-luck charm. The increasingly frantic Howard, in turn, needs it to score his million bucks, in order to settle accounts with … well, God knows howmany different people. But chiefly Arno.
It’s hard to imagine what the Safdie brothers have in mind, at about this point. Are we supposed to root for Howard? Hopefully not, because he sure as hell doesn’t deserve salvation. And if not, then who? What is this story’s point? Why are we suffering through 135 minutes of people screaming at each other, and behaving badly in every imaginable manner?
No reason I can extract. And you can take that to the auction house.
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